NHL-Rogers TV deal turns Canadian TV sports upside down

Look to the casualties for the real news, starting with looming death of TSN as Canada’s Sports Leader

Rogers CEO Nadir Mohamed (left) shakes hands with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman following a news conference in Toronto on Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2013 as they announced a long-term broadcast and multimedia agreement, which provides Rogers with all national rights. Also announced was a multi-year sub-licensing agreement with CBC and TVA sports for the NHL games.

Photograph by: Chris Young
, THE CANADIAN PRESS

But to these eyes, it was the invisible print on the blockbuster NHL-Rogers TV deal announced Tuesday morning that carried the real news: the casualties, the carnage ... the looming death from unnatural causes of The Sports Network as Canada’s Sports Leader.

The deal gives Rogers — basically Sportsnet, but also some affiliated stations and all its digital holdings — the national rights to all NHL games, including the Stanley Cup playoffs and Cup final, on all of its platforms, in all languages.

With the stroke of a pen, sports on Canadian TV has turned upside down.

Think about the preponderance of hockey that makes up TSN’s programming. Think of the 12-year term of Sportsnet’s exclusive stranglehold on NHL hockey, starting next season.

Try to imagine what TSN is going to fill its 24/7/365 sports hole with until the end of the 2025-26 NHL season, if the only hockey it’s got are regional games of the Montreal Canadiens and Winnipeg Jets, and the world junior and a few less prestigious properties.

Think about the number of employees TSN has, full-time, on hockey. Not just the Bob McKenzie/Darren Dreger/Pierre LeBrun staples, but all the panelists and colour analysts, all the producers and directors and cameramen and technical people who do nothing but hockey.

Think about the worst move the CBC ever made, getting rid of Chris Cuthbert, who now finds himself missing a massive part of his annual portfolio because even if no bridges were burned, his ex-employer has lost control of what little hockey it retains, and his current employer is left with table scraps.

“I'm hoping one of those hockey analytics guys can help spin this TV contract news a little differently,” Cuthbert joked on his Twitter account Tuesday morning.

Or think about James Duthie, TSN’s incomparable studio host, and what will be left for him if he stays.

And while you’re at it, save a thought or two for the future of Hockey Night in Canada, which Sportsnet will sub-lease to the CBC for the next four years, but without The Corp paying any rights fees or getting any of the advertising revenue — or having final say on the product, including on-air personnel. It will be, by the sounds of it, hockey interspersed with a steady diet of commercials promoting CBC’s other shows. And without the revenue HNIC generates, what becomes of the money-whipped CBC itself?

Is this all a bad thing? By no means.

Hockey Night’s formulaic, predictable coverage had its share of weak links, from play-by-play depth to analysts to panelists, and presumably a fresh set of eyes overseeing the operation will open the windows and let some air into the place.

TSN, though, had developed a strong product and a deep, smart, high-calibre cast of characters. So on the surface, the NHL’s decision to take the money and run from its most competent sports broadcast partner seems apt to produce sub-standard television for a while.

Given Sportsnet’s lower-profile cast of commentators and the massive scope of the project they have signed up for, a flood of TSN talent moving over seems inevitable, though TSN has indicated it intends to soldier on with hard-hitting hockey news and analysis and is telling employees not to jump ship.

"We are completely comfortable and confident putting our game in their hands,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said of the move to Rogers’s properties, but you might want to clip and save that quote. The hockey deal isn’t forever, but it’s going to feel like it, if Sportsnet doesn’t drastically upgrade its talent.

The four-year term of CBC’s continuing involvement in Hockey Night will be plenty of time for Don Cherry to play out the string — he’ll be 84 by then — and there’ll be room under the Sportsnet umbrella, or ought to be, for Ron MacLean (if he chooses to go) and the gifted Elliotte Friedman and one or two others from the CBC ship.

Likewise, there is no voice in Canadian television more trusted on all things hockey than McKenzie’s, so unless he intends to walk away altogether to do Coke Zero commercials — he’ll only be 58 when the new deal kicks in — it would make sense that he’d be the very first insider Sportsnet approaches. But he’s on a long-term contract with TSN, and so is Dreger, though LeBrun’s TSN/ESPN deal is up at the end of this season.

As sad a day as it was for the hockey people at TSN, it was probably a good news day at the Canadian Football League, which just announced a five-year extension of its deal with TSN. It ought to benefit from moving up the priority ladder in the network’s programming. Once hockey goes, the CFL will be at the head of the list of properties TSN has left, including curling, the NFL, soccer and the NBA. World junior hockey is big, but only lasts 10 days.

A portion of the money TSN saves on NHL rights presumably will be used to acquire other sports commodities, but in Canada, as Rogers CEO Nadir Mohammed rightly pointed out, “NHL hockey is the holy grail."

TSN still has a piece of the upcoming Winter Olympics — in partnership with CBC, which has the rights for both Sochi and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio — but with the ultra-acquisitive Keith Pelley (who headed the multi-platform Olympic consortium that broadcast the 2010 Vancouver Olympics) at the helm of Rogers Media, that avenue could soon be closed, too.

It was only six years ago that the TSN/CTV partnership bid $1.4 billion over 10 years for the Canadian NHL rights. This deal, $5.2 billion for 12 years, represents an increase of 315 per cent per year. (Just in case you thought two lockouts damaged the NHL’s financial picture, or wondered where those projections of an $80 million salary cap came from.)

Among the other offshoots of Tuesday’s announcement: Quebec City’s chances of getting its expansion team just went way up, given that the French-language component of the deal went to TVA, a subsidiary of Quebecor, whose president and CEO, Pierre Karl Peladeau, is the principal in the Quebec expansion bid. Rogers’ return on its investment would be greater with another Canadian franchise, or even two — and 100 per cent of the expansion fees go to NHL owners, not players.

The agreement puts an end to regionalization of games and local blackouts, promises a marquee matchup every Sunday, and guarantees that viewers on Saturdays will get every game, either on CBC or one or another of Sportsnet’s properties or partners.

Bettman said it represents a great, forward-looking move for hockey. Possibly.

Once they find out what all this is going to cost them, viewers will be the judges of that.

Rogers CEO Nadir Mohamed (left) shakes hands with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman following a news conference in Toronto on Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2013 as they announced a long-term broadcast and multimedia agreement, which provides Rogers with all national rights. Also announced was a multi-year sub-licensing agreement with CBC and TVA sports for the NHL games.

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